Kobe Bryant will go down as one of the greatest basketball players this game has ever seen, but there is a certain record that Bryant never imagined he would set.
Dave McMenamin writes that Bryant became the NBA’s all-time leader in field goal misses on his final attempt in the Lakers’ loss to the Rockets Tuesday night.
With his final missed FGA on Tuesday night against HOU (came with 2:27 left in the 4th quarter), Kobe Bryant missed his 15,296th career field goal attempt and passed John Havlicek for the most field goal attempts missed in NBA history if you combine regular season and postseason numbers.
By only looking at regular season misses, Bryant ranks third all-time behind Michael Jordan and Elvin Hayes. Nevertheless, the players on these field goal missed lists are some of the league’s legends. Even though Kobe Bryant is number one now in field goal misses, he is just one of five players who has scored over 30,000 points.
The reason why Bryant leads the NBA in misses is because he has played in the league for 16 seasons and he will inevitable take a lot of shots. Bryant is one of the best conditioned players in the NBA and thus he has been playing for such a long time. Bryant is a natural born scorer, and there is no way to average 25 points per game in a career without taking a plethora of shots.
Just like how Kobe is considered one of the best players of all-time, Lenny Wilkens is looked upon by many of one of the greatest coaches to run the sidelines in the NBA. Wilkens currently ranks second in most wins as a coach, and he held the top spot on the list until 2010 when Don Nelson became the winningest coach of all-time. Nevertheless, Wilkens finished his coaching career with 1,155 loses, the most in NBA history.
However, even though Bryant and Wilkens have set the “wrong record,” it only speaks to their longevity and ability to stay in the sport. The reason why both of these men have suffered so many setbacks is because they have been in the league for such a long time, an accomplishment in itself.
